Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada began receiving campaign contributions from at least four American Indian tribes only after they hired Jack Abramoff, Republicans charged this week in an effort to tie the Senate Democratic leader to the disgraced lobbyist.

On Thursday, Reid shrugged off questions about money he received from tribal clients of Abramoff, who pleaded guilty last month to three felonies after being accused of exchanging meals, travel and gifts for political favors.

"I've said that I received money from Indians in the past and will continue to do so," Reid said.

Incidentally, Hamilton, Ontario is approximately 150 miles from Detroit.

Also, along the lines of bin Laden's truce offer, Al Jazeera reported yesterday that al Zawahiri made a truce offer of his own, inviting President Bush to convert to Islam. (Hindustan Times). This is relevant, because after the 9/11 attacks, many otherwise radical clerics and Imams were able to condemn OBL on the grounds that he didn't offer the kaffir an opportunity to submit to Islam before he slaughtered them, in accordance with Sharia law. Now, AQ's top two have both made the offer in a span of three weeks (OBL also offered a truce to the UK just prior to the London subway bombings). And the offers were made prior to the SOTU address, where Bush would certainly reject the offers in no uncertain terms.

Also, Zawahiri's white turban, white robe and the absence of his AK-47 were symbolic of this gesture of "peace". I don't have any read on the black background, except that it hasn't been done before. I don't buy the puffed-up presumptions that he's petrfied and taking extra steps to hide by concealing his background (we spend too much time congratulating ourselves on kicking ass, not enough time resigning ourselves to the long, titanic struggle this war is going to be). I believe the background is a trigger of some sort.

Also, multiple al Zawahiri tapes have consistently triggered attacks (outside of Iraq and Afghanistan) within 30 days of the last tape release. That pattern is based on two tapes released within a three month period. Never before have there been three AZ tapes and one OBL tape in a thirty day period.

And finally, I think they have to hit a hard target and they have to do it on Bush's watch to inflict maximum damage on the President and support for the overall war. A radiological attack on the Super Bowl would accomplish that in spades, and unlike the 9/11 attack, it would divide this country in a way we've never been divided before. They're not going to have an opportunity like this, in a place like this (a heavily Muslim, border city) again during the Bush presidency.

I hope I'm wrong. Or, at the very least, if I'm right, I hope they fail. But I'll be stunned if they don't try something huge on Sunday.

At the "Sound of Europe" summit, German newspaper editor, Roger de Weck, chose the wrong target to bully as he invited the president of Latvia, Vaika Vike-Freiberga, to agree that new EU members from east and central Europe posed a danger because they are too pro-American. Her from-the-hip response can be found here. An excerpt:

"Throughout the years, in parts of Europe, intellectuals and even politicians were enamoured with the idea of Marxism and even some thought the Soviet Union was an embodiment of what Socialism and the protection of the worker was all about. America was more realistic. America looked on us as captive nations. We were captive nations, and we are now free."

After this statement, the old-European newspaper editor cut-off the President of Latvia - something we have become accustomed to here in the States. When did journalists' interrupting presidents become acceptable? I wonder if President Ahmageddondinnerjakkket of Iran ever gets interrupted and/or bullied by a newspaper man.

In all the discussion about journalist casualties in Iraq, I have heard no one comment on the fact that the media's behavior increases the risk to its reporters. The goal of the terrorists in Iraq, like that of terrorists everywhere, is not to inflict casualties, but rather to frighten people by creating the impression of lawlessness and illustrate the inability of legally constituted authorities to maintain order and provide protection. The media are a vital tool in achieving this goal. If the terrorists can get more media coverage by killing or seriously injuring one reporter than by killing a division of Iraqi soldiers, guess whom they are going to target.

If the networks really wanted to protect their reporters, they would do the following: First, issue large press decals to put on helmets, vehicles, etc. so that reporters were readily identifiable. Second, establish a well-publicized policy that any terrorist injury or killing of a reporter would cause a one-week blackout of any coverage of terrorist acts in Iraq. All coverage from Iraq for that week would focus on progress in rebuilding the nation and "good" news. Such a policy would reduce the deaths of, and injuries to, reporters in Iraq by at least a factor of 10. After all, how many al-Jeezera reporters have been killed by the Iraqi terrorists? The Iraqi terrorists are bloodthirsty and evil, but within their warped view of the world, they are not stupid.

Sadly, the media seem willing to risk the lives of their reporters in order to focus on the bad news in Iraq.

I think Hockert may be on to something;)And it's not just terrorists that are smarter than the media, the MSM's intended audience has largely outgrown them as well.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

The school board is scheduled to vote Wednesday on settling the part of the lawsuit Frazier filed against board members, his teacher and assistant principal for $32,500. But Frazier, a Boynton Beach High junior who said he was berated in class when he refused to stand during the pledge [i.e., pledge of allegiance], wants more than that.

Well of course he does. I expect every kid in Florida will be pulling the same stunt now. (Via Stop the ACLU.)

...the Mother Sheehan Arrest Story this morning. The schmecklehead anchor was "reporting" what had happened (he was looking down and reading) and Soledad O'Brien, from the other side of the split screen, interrupted him to note that Sheehan was asked to cover up her shirt and refused prior to her removal. The anchor said: "That differs from this account here. This is from her blog on michaelmoore.com..." and then he read Sheehan's "letter" verbatim with the text on screen.

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2,245, huh? I just got back from there."

I told him that my son died there. That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain. ...I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.

I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I am not going to let Bushco take anything else away from me...or you.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Remember all those news stories in 1993 about how the nomination of former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg to replace conservative Justice Byron White on the United States Supreme Court would “tilt the balance of the court to the left?”

Of course you don’t. Because there weren’t any.

Ya don't say....

Most of the people running the Has-Been Media back then are still in charge today. Or it's their like-minded successors. If you read the newspapers back in 1993 you would never have heard about "far-left nominee Ginsburg", or "left-wing judge Ginsburg", despite the fact that the woman is a card carrying member of the ACLU. The only way you could find about about how far left Ginsburg was, was by listening to conservative radio, which in 1993 meant Rush Limbaugh and various local DJs. The conservative backlash against the Has-Been media started on the radio, and we've controlled the airwaves ever since, at least in national ratings. I make no guarantees when it comes to local nutjobs. God knows Seattle had more than it's share.

I guess what really makes my mind pop is the fact that the Has-Been Media still tries to call itself "objective". They haven't been objective in fifty years, and they ain't gonna change now.

A confidential Saudi report prepared just weeks before the Palestinian elections predicted a Hamas victory in Gaza and the West Bank and puts the blame on the United States: "By failing to strengthen (President Mahmoud )Abbas's position, the U.S. has paved the way for a Hamas victory," states a document prepared by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project.

Pay no mind to the fact that the House of Saud exports Wahabbism at every opportunity. Forget that if it weren't for the fact that Saudi Arabia supports splodydopes in palestine, the splodydopes would run out of money and support rather quickly. It's all the fault of the nasty USA!

"Moreover, the U.S administration's faith in the power of elections to transform people makes it oblivious to the possibility that the democratic process is often a double-edged sword which can have unintended consequences," goes on to say the policy brief delivered last Dec. 27 by the SNSAP's director, Nawaf Obaid.

Furthermore, the brief states that the U.S. failed to press "Abbas to implement his commitments to security and disarmament, and has not succeeded in convincing donor nations to fulfill their pledges for financial assistance to the Palestinians."

It's laughable. It really is. The Arab countries in the Middle East have been using and supporting the terrorist groups that make up palestine for decades, and now that those terrorist groups are in power, the goat-fucking sand fleas want to whine and blame us.

Just think - if we were pulling oil out of ANWAR, we could tell the entire region to go piss up a rope. Thanks for keeping us dependant on foreign oil, liberals!

Recent surveys conducted by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project indicate that there is deep distrust of senior officials in the Palestinian Authority, most of whom are Fatah members. "This situation has created an opportunity that Hamas has been able to exploit."

The brief cites United Nations statistics indicating that "almost 75 percent of Palestinians live below the poverty line."

Maybe that's because the United Nations as a whole were too busy giving Yasser Arafish a humjob to notice that he was a corrupt greedy crook who took the billions upon billions of dollars given to the palestinian authority and used them for his own perposes, mostly including blowing up Jewish children. The palestinians as a country and as a society produce nothing but misery and terrorists. They choose to be that way. I say to hell with them all. Maybe when they stop blowing up busses and bat mitzvahs and pizza shops I'll start caring about them again.

Gah. Read the whole article. It's one big "Let's all blame the USA and try to make the world forget that the reason the palestinians are even a problem is because we turned them into nothing more than terrorist animals" piece. As I said earlier, the palestinians just made our lives a whole lot easier, because we no longer have to pretend that they're not subhuman parasitic asscannons. I just think it's funny to have a major supporter of the palestinian's terrorism blame us for Hamas winning elections.